Reassesses Botticelli's major works, examines his use of color, and traces his career as an artist.

""Brilliantly conceived and executed, Botticelli's Secret is a riveting search for buried treasure." -Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve. Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence's art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city's powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy...

The Italian Renaissance is remembered as much for intrigue as it is for art, with papal politics and infighting among Italy's many city-states. The attempted assassination of the Medici brothers in Florence in 1478 is one of the best-known examples of the machinations of the age. While the assailants were the Medici's rivals, the Pazzi family, questions have always lingered about who really orchestrated the attack. Five centuries later, Marcello Simonetta,...

These lectures cover the art historical periods known as the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance, which extended from about 1400 to about 1520. No era of artistic achievement is as renowned as the Renaissance, and no country holds a higher place in that period than Italy. The supreme works created in Florence, Rome, Venice, and other Italian cities by such masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian have never...